SAS® data visualization implemented at Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

SAS® data visualization implemented at Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

SAS® Visual Analytics helps government agency transform public reporting across the country

CARY, NC
(May 22, 2013)

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has implemented SAS® Visual analytics to inform policy decisions on health, welfare and community services.

AIHW recently became accredited as a data integrating authority by the Australian government, along with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, another SAS customer. As the country's national agency for information and statistics about health and welfare, AIHW aims to improve the well-being of citizens through better use of information and statistics. Governments and community leaders use information from AIHW to discuss, debate and design policies for health, housing and community services.

"The SAS Visual Analytics platform enables AIHW to analyze large and very complex data sets to provide authoritative, evidence-based information to government agencies. Collecting, analyzing and disseminating this information promotes the health and well-being of the community through a better understanding of the data for policy proposals," said David Bowie, SAS Australia's Managing Director.

The Australian government requirements for integrating data sets containing sensitive information are very strict. AIHW is one of only two accredited agencies that can produce detailed information for research and analytical purposes that inform discussions on health, housing and community services policies.

"The new visual analytics capabilities will enable AIHW to be much more immediate in how it enables its analysts to get the information they need in real time, rather than wait for a report that may not even fully address the issues at hand," said Bowie.

One area in which AIHW is already using visual analytics is in the development of new approaches for presenting decision makers with information about mental health services. The agency can quickly and easily produce dashboards with rich visualizations from very complex and rapidly changing data sets and make them available online. AIHW will be extending this capability to other subject areas in the coming months.

About SAS® Visual Analytics

SAS Visual Analytics is an in-memory solution for exploring any amount of data very quickly. Users can spot patterns, identify opportunities for further analysis and convey visual results via Web reports or iPad® and Android tablets.

SAS Visual Analytics quickly reads data into memory for fast processing and data visualization. Users can explore all data, execute analytic correlations on billions of rows of data in just minutes or seconds, and visually present results. They can then quickly identify patterns, trends and relationships in data that are not apparent before being graphically displayed.

Since the best way to understand the value of SAS Visual Analytics is by experiencing it firsthand, SAS has created an online environment for customers to try the software. Please visit the new, interactive SAS Visual Analytics demo (sas.com/visual).

About SAS

SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 80,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.